How do I compare two pages in same space

[Stephen Kairys]

Confluence Server 5.9.7

I have two different pages in the same space. They are similar, with minor differences. Call them:

VENDORS and VENDORS_NEW

How do I generate a comparison of these two pages? I'm looking for something similar to the "Compare Selected Versions" that compares two historical versions of the same page (within PAGE HISTORY).

Since Confluence has the above ability within the same page, I'd hope it could do the same with two separate pages. 

Thanks,

Stephen

[Milo Test · Accepted solution]

I don't think it can be done within Confluence. I'd export them both to PDF then use Acrobat to do a comparison.

On the other hand, why don't you just copy the VENDORS page, then edit the VENDORS_NEW page, select all and copy, then edit the Copy of VENDORS page, select all and paste. Then you can use the history compare feature.

[Stephen Kairys]

Thank you. (I like your 2nd solution.) As it turns out, i realized that v1 (in Page History) of VENDORS_NEW is very close to the last version of VENDORS. So, I ended up comparing v1 to v50 (current version). 

You'd think, though, that Confluence would support page-to-page compare...I wonder if that's a feature request. 

[Stephen Kairys]

Question:

1. Is this method (your 2nd suggestion) known to occasionally produce a false positive? I see one difference reported (text added) that seems to be wrong as there is no visible change.
2. Does the Page History compare tend to show a lot of content before and after one difference? e.g. the difference is on line 1200 of the doc, but I see (e.g.) 1150-1250?

Thanks.

[René Kjellerup]

another way to accomplish this, could be done with python.

If you are familiar with the output from the posix diff -u command:

#!/usr/bin/env python

import difflib
import sys
try:
    from xmlrpc.client import ServerProxy
    from xmlrpc.client import Fault
except:
    from xmlrpclib import ServerProxy
    from xmlrpclib import Fault


def get_page(page_id,
             confluence_url='https://<confluence_domain>',
             confluence_login='<username>',
             confluence_password='<password>'):
    client = ServerProxy(confluence_url+"/rpc/xmlrpc", verbose=0)
    try:
        auth_token = client.confluence2.login(confluence_login,
                                              confluence_password)
    except:
        print("Can't login to confluence")
        return []

    try:
        # getting confluence page
        page = client.confluence2.getPage(auth_token, page_id)
    except Fault as e:
        print(e.faultString)
        return []
    return page['content'].split('\n')
if len(sys.argv) < 3:
    print("usage:" + sys.argv[0] + " page_id_1 page_id_2")
for line in difflib.unified_diff(get_page(sys.argv[1]), get_page(sys.argv[2]), fromfile='pageID='+sys.argv[1], tofile='pageID='+sys.argv[2]):
    print(line[:-1])

this little script could help you

[Alexandre Morgaut]

It is very frequent in confluence to have this kind of requirements

• Cloned pages for
  • meeting minutes
  • feature specification variants
  • technical specification variants
  • ...
• Pages created from templates

I would expect to have this as a standard feature

As of today

• As mentioned page comparison exists within page history
• We already have fields to retrieve another page (ex: "new parent page" in the "move page" form) which could help defining the page to compare with

so the work should not be enormous

With more effort such "Compare with" feature could also propose

• a filter for pages sharing the same template
• a quick selection, if any, to the page the current page was cloned from